The Grumpy Chef - Seaford

By the time we got our visas, I was eight and a half months pregnant with our second son, it was now or never so we went for it and bought the restaurant that was owned by a Greek family. Three weeks after being there I gave birth to our second son whilst taking over the restaurant, we opened seven days a week, from six in the morning until nine at night, we did that for roughly six years!

It was a huge learning curve for both of us, we worked opposite shifts to each other with a new-born baby and a three-year-old, then less than sixteen months later our third son came along! I worked in the mornings doing the early shift, we swapped over at lunchtime, I would take the children off and Jared would work through until late in the evening. We absolutely loved being around people and learned so much about customer service. There was quite a big recession in America around 2008/2009 so I came back to the UK and eventually Jared came back – we lost about £350,000 and came back with nothing, no jobs, no credit history, no nothing!

We started again, re-built our careers but my role at the council wasn’t really testing me, so when the owner of The Grumpy Chef approached us to see if we wanted to buy it, we took the plunge and bought it!”